New growth

The weather here has really scuppered my new found enthusiasm to get my garden in order. No sooner had I decided on some lovely new features and actually started building them when the heavens opened and don't seem to have closed since. I'm certainly no fair weather gardener but I hate, hate, hate sloshing around like a pig in muck so most of my time outdoors has been spent either in the workshop or in the polytunnel - which has actually never looked so organised.
There's not much flowering in the garden at the moment - a design flaw (I use the word 'design' very loosely here) on my part, most things seem to flower in summer in my garden with little interest the rest of the year round - a flaw I aim to correct this year and next year.
The polytunnel is a different story though, there's greenery everywhere and plants are starting to flower that wouldn't be flowering for another 6 weeks or so outside.

These Hostas and Acers are romping away under the polytunnel staging.

This Weigela is in full flower whereas the one outside has barely leafed up yet. The Heuchera next to it is also in full flower.

My first standard Fuschia! It was a cutting from a Fuschia I found growing wild up the road and it's perfect for standards - grew very quick and forms lovely. It is starting to flower but I've pinched the ends out again since this photo was taken so that I can get a larger shape.
I also have a Hawkshead standard that I grew at the same time as this one but it doesn't look anywhere near as impressive and the growth is nowhere near as bushy.

In December 2013 I thought I'd give Rose cuttings a try. I took several cuttings from various roses I have and quite a few have taken and succeeded. This one is a climber called 'Snowqueen' (I think) and will be ready to plant out this year along with the others I did.
I forgot to take cuttings late last year so I did them in January this year on the off chance they would take - out of about 10 cuttings only 3 have taken but that's 3 new roses I don't have to buy.

Outside the Rhododendrons are flowering, at least the ones near the polytunnel are, the ones on the garden are still just in bud.

THE most loathesome plant I have ever had the misfortune to come across - Gorse. At first it was a novelty, it completely covered our 3 acres here but to start with we found the spears amusing and the flowers and scent made up for the fact it's such a bully. But that was before we knew how hard it is to eradicate.
The first 2 years we lived here we bulldozed the land of all this gorse and set fire to the heaps - huge mistake. The heaps were full of dry spindly gorse which doesn't really burn well but given that the soil was peat based THAT managed to burn and burn and burn. 2 years after lighting the fires if we got a good crosswind we could see smoke start billowing from those heaps - I kid you not!
That was our first realisation that this awful plant was not going to go down easy, followed by the renewed growth that was thigh high by the following year. We knew then that all those days and nights with the bulldozer, all those blisters and all those painful piercings from the spikes was a complete waste of time.

We contemplated weedkilling the lot but in the end, 2 years ago (10 years after moving here) we got another bulldozer in, scraped the lot out, pulled out every root we could find, every rock we could find, levelled the land and then reseeded it all. We figured that our mowers could keep the stuff down if it manages to start growing again.
This is the land that we've managed to sort out as it stands now. The bottom fence is to keep the dogs on this area but we also have the trees past the fenceline and a lovely burn running straight the way through. I love the deciduous trees down there, especially the Oak trees but we haven't even made a start on the Gorse that grows beyond the point of the fence.

The area of grass directly in front of the house is the land that MrTG ploughed by hand, rotovated by hand, de-stoned and raked and flattened all by hand and it has to be said it's the best bit of land we have. The land further down is what the diggers and ploughs did and it just isn't as level as we'd like PLUS that darned Gorse is still attempting to come through. There's a carpet of it around the corner of the polytunnel but luckily the mowers do keep it down. Think that weedkiller may be coming out after all!!

Remember the summer

We have had some real mild weather over the christmas period but I've been recovering from a chest infection so haven't been able to really do anything out in the garden despite me raring to get going. I ventured out today with my camera but the snow was falling periodically and I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera so hot footed it back indoors - cold, snowy weather always looks nicer from inside a warm house huh!

My chest infection actually began at the beginning of December pretty much as soon as we landed in Mexico - it was followed by two weeks of struggling to breathe, coughing and an inability to sleep. The infection also kick started a pretty awful asthma condition that flares up during times of a cold or allergies etc etc. Not to be selfish though - I passed it along to our friends that we went away with and they too suffered, my feelings of guilt that I had also ruined our friends holiday was slightly soothed by the fact that said friends are off to the Caribbean again in 3 days - yes, I'm jealous and wish we were going with them. Sseriously though, I did feel bad for them because we had an awful time of it and were actually glad to be going home so I do hope they have a great time in the Dominican Republic.
Anyways I took a few pictures of some of the plants in Mexico - the gardens were kept exceptionally immaculate and the gardeners were working every single day.
Not many were in flower at the time but the greenery was awesome all by itself

 It would be amazing to think that my Oleander would ever grow up to be this size but I doubt very much that it will based on the fact that it's still the 24" it was 3 years ago.

I have no idea what plant these leaves are from but they were huge and I'd love to grow some myself.

I have no idea what all this purple is but Mr TG really liked it and I must admit it certainly had some impact when grown in large areas.

The two together really did look lovely.

The coconut trees shed their coconuts regular and seeing the splatter mess on the concrete paths made me dread to think what damage one could do to a person.

 Here is a Mexican Coati, a member of the Racoon family but it's face is more doglike in my opinion, was amusing to watch them digging grubs out of the grass.

Iguanas were everywhere, often coming out during the day to warm up and would tolerate a person getting really quite close. I always tried not to annoy them but if they got uncomfortable they just scooted back into the hidey hole.

These Racoons (we referred to them as bandits) were a highlight for us, they are so funny to watch and were surprisingly respectful of certain boundaries such as the main dining halls. They had learned what was acceptable and would stay their side of the wall until a scrap was offered. Unfortunately American vacationers didn't understand the fascination of other holidaymakers and were really quite nasty to them, we had to tell a few people to back off and leave them alone - adults and children. I understand that they probably view them as vermin but for many of us they were lovely to see and watch and they really didn't cause an ounce of trouble unless you sat at the snack bar and deliberately encouraged them with scraps. One Racoon quickly turns into 30 when food is on offer and apparantly it can be a tad intimidating. The solution to that problem is quite obvious though really - don't feed them!

These dolphins were a bit of a quandry for me. In my opinion the pool, although large, was not big enough for 5 of them and I felt that the hotel should be making a larger area for them - they certainly have the ground space to do so.
Obviously the hotel makes money from tourists swimming with and learning to train with the dolphins so it was good to see that they were given proper relaxing time and playing time in between jobs - we jokingly referred to this as a policy of the dolphin union.
After 15 mins or so of playing they willingly appeared to return to where they knew they would be needed and they were very very well trained and all handlers appeared to be kind and knowledgable and insisted they were only touched in certain areas (not that I got to touch them but a friend did).
Like I said I have mixed feelings about intelligent mammals such as Dolphins being kept captive and I deliberately avoided going anywhere near the dolphinarium until the last day but I felt much better once I saw how well kept they were and was kind of glad I didn't return without seeing that.

Garden ressurection

This year gardening has taken a different turn for me. I've finally admitted after another year of wasted veggie growing that I really do want to take a break from it for a while - just the veggie growing though.
I begin every new year with the renewed interest and excitement about growing Sweetcorn and onions etc the same way every gardener does I guess but over the last couple of seasons I've noticed it has become a chore rather than an interest and all those lovely veggies I sow and tend to slowly but surely get neglected to the point where they're just left to their own devices - and seeing as they're in a polytunnel they soon succumb to thirst.
I thought maybe I was just trying to grow too much because I have the space so this year I grew just what I knew we liked to eat as a family - Sweetcorn, Cucumber, Strawberries, Beans, Courgette and onion - but even those have been left to rot away, in fact the strawberry runners have just about made their way out of the polytunnel door in search of water.
I haven't even kept on top of the Sweetpea this year and that is the one plant I love to grow every single year as a cut flower. It's usually still producing plenty of flowers this time of year however whereas the garden sweetpea is still in flower the ones in the PT are well into seed now.
So I have decided, next year I am NOT growing fruit and veg (oh yes the apples have all been left to drop and rot too). My polytunnel will get an overhaul, the beds will be renewed and maybe even a different layout installed, I'm not even going to do the cut flowers next year (least I don't think so).
2015 is going to be the year I concentrate on renovating the second half of my garden and it's going to be epic. I have so many ideas floating around - thanks to Pinterest - and I can't wait to begin tearing everything up, building and planting.
So I've been watching the garden more keenly this year to see what works and what doesn't, what plants are thriving and what is just limping along and I have plenty of cuttings taken and a load of new plants waiting for a home.

Here's a few pix of part of the mess I'll be tackling next year, it looks like a lot of green healthy growth and plants but it's really not, there's the odd few decent shrubs and perennials in there (mostly in the wrong place) but it's mainly weeds.

The next picture shows the Leycesteria that has self seeded everywhere. It's a lovely plant and I'm loathe to take any out especially as it tolerates the sever gales we get here but it's getting way too invasive and greedy now. The Hebe to the right is about 13 years old now and is huge, it flowers twice a year and takes a real battering in the winter.

The tall plant in the back centre of the next picture is a Rose bush, it flowers profusely every year and never suffers from blackspot like most of the others however it always (without fail) seems to flower in time for a downpour of rain and then the blooms rot immediately.

The grass in the above picture is so invasive it's ureal, I've been pulling that stuff out for years but you only have to miss one root and it pops up all over again. There are a couple of Rose bushes in there also but they never really did well even before all the rest of the stuff grew so I'll probably dispose of them - though I may plant them elsewhere just out of curiosity to see if they grow better.

Horsetail is a nightmare!

This is why I should never bother even attempting to grow salad crops

Not a pretty sight is it! The Pak Choi is bolted - not that I've even figured out what to actually do with Pak Choi anyways - and the rest is simply over growing or going woody or else the slugs are dining on it.
Then we go outside to the newish raised beds and look what we find

That not so pretty sight is bolted Leeks mixed in with that ruddy horsetail weed!
I refuse to fight a losing battle with Horsetail so I'm removing these beds, it's absolutely beyond my tenacity to keep fighting that damn stuff.

On the upside all this sun is making the flowers grow at the same rate as the weeds

The Rhodi's are flowering better than ever this year - may have something to do with my lack of pruning

I can smell the Hawthorn flowers as soon as I round the corner of the greenhouse and it's heaven - I love this smell

Mr TG has finally gotten round to erecting the fencing to keep the raptors in (I refer here to our Great Dane). There's about 150metres of it that needed erecting along the bottom edge of the land because Huntly kept escaping into the neighbours fields but we had to make it 6ft tall to ensure he couldn't whizz over it.
Unfortunately this has meant that we have fenced off the burn and the lovely wild area that sits beyond the new fence. We'll put a gate in so that we still have access and I also have plans to somehow make a lovely walk down there - much to Mr TG's despair.

Bless him!

There's life in the winter garden

I've broken my laptop and I'm not happy! I managed to crack the liquid display and it's now basically useless, fortunately I came up with the idea that I may be able to connect the laptop to the monitor of my old computer with a VGA lead and hey presto, I can at least use the laptop - phew!

It's that time of year again where we're all busy, busy, busy planning the new gardening year isn't it! I have a basic plan of veggies I'll be growing but I've cut right back and won't be bothering with Cabbage (the ones currently rotting in the veg patch prove we don't eat it much) or Cauliflower (I did grow some successfully last year but the heads weren't worth the effort involved) and I'm also limiting the amount of some of the other veggies I grow yearly.
This years veggies will be:

• Sweetcorn.
• Cucumber.
• Courgette - growing outside this year as they go too mouldy in the PT.
• French Beans.
• Swede.
• Leeks.
• Parsnips.
• Onions - inside and out.
• Tomatoes - only 2 plants though as they never ripen.
• Salad bar - I've never been able to grow Lettuce so I want to master it this year.
• Potatoes - I 'may' have a go with these again this year, blight has affected previous years.

I took a wander around the garden yesterday as I've spent most of my time at the PT and I was quite surprised at what is either still in flower or is showing signs of coming into flower, I guess this winter has been quite mild so far.

Skimmia

Kaffir Lily in sheltered position.

Escallonia

I'm not sure what this stuff is called but I was fascinated by it yesterday. An old tree trunk is covered with various types of this funghi looking stuff - very pretty in its own way.

Despite it being the middle of winter, there really is life in the garden.

Rats, rats, rats!

So that's Christmas over with for another year, I hope Santa was kind to you all and that you had a fabulous day doing whatever makes Christmas special for you.
We had family and friends here and I enjoyed having a house full but I did feel for those people in England that were flooded out over the Christmas holidays. What an awful thing to have happen at any time of the year but I imagine it ruined the festive period for many many families.

I've mentioned before that my daughter works in a certain DIY store and that she manages to save me plants from the skip before they're taken away and disposed of and on Christmas Eve she bought me back quite a little hoard. Some were missing pots so I had to take them straight to the polytunnel and get them potted up but most of them included a tag and I was particularly pleased to see that one of them was a 'Brazillian Jasmine'. I had seen this in the store a few months ago but wasn't sure it would survive here even under cover so I decided not to risk it, now I can find out and it hasn't cost me anything.
The stash included the jasmine, several different hardy Fuchsia, Cordylines, Ferns, Hydrangeas (including my favourite 'Zorro', Kaffir lily,  several Heucheras (none of which I already had) and something without a label that has a Citronella smell to it.

Needless to say I'm really happy with the stash.
I also received some Philadelphus in the post just before Christmas. I got them from one of the gardening mag offers and I was pleasantly surprised by the size of them. They were well packaged and much bigger than I thought they would be, the 3 cost me just the p&p cost - just over £5.
The variety is Philadelphus 'Virginalis'

I didn't know that this plant was also known as 'False Jasmine' or 'Whistle bush' due to the ease of making whistles from the pulp!
This particular variety is double flowered so I'm hoping for some strong scent as the single flowered ones I currently have only smell when you get right up there and stick your nose in.

Words and herbs blog

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I had rats appear in my greenhouse. I thought I'd managed to deter them by blocking up their holes and keeping the bird seed that they had been feeding on in a plastic bucket. Seems I haven't achieved that aim!
This is new dirt that's been tunneled out and underneath those boards is absolutely full of loose dirt! I did notice the split in the tub on the left though and I'm guessing that's what is still drawing them in so I've taken care of it. Funny thing is, if they dig just a few feet west of this point they'll come up right inside the Buzzards aviary and then they'll be toast.

Roses make a garden

I have a "thing" about Roses, I love them! To me there is no garden plant more perfect and it is the one plant I would never give up growing. I'll admit It can be quite a let down to shove your nose in the most exquisite, beautifully formed bloom to find there is no scent but still it's a let down you soon recover from.
I have added a few new Roses to the borders this year and to be honest I hadn't expected to get much in the way of blooms this year - even now I underestimate the Rose - so I have been pleasantly surprised by the show they're putting on right now.

I've already posted images of climber 'Compassion', it's still flowering as vigorously as it was weeks ago and showing no signs of bud formation slowing down. The scent is gorgeous and until recently was my favourite in the garden.

This next rose has a definite Blue hue to it. I cannot remember the name of it offhand as a few of them got mixed up untagged before planting but luckily I recorded descriptions of each one alongside names so it won't take me long to figure it out.
This Blueish rose is my new favourite for scent, it smells like sherbert (or what you imagine Sherbert to smell like) and really is gorgeous.

This next Rose is another new one for me, it's name is 'Nostalgia' and the two tone Raspberry and Banana colours certainly make up for any lack of scent.

I have had this next rose 'Faithfull' for a couple of years now, it flowers well but lacks any scent and the blooms are easily  ruined by rain. Gorgeous non the less though.

This next rose - unknown name - is long lived and would be a favourite if it wasn't so easily ruined by rain. For some reason it seems to time it's peak flowering time with a monsoon so we never get to see it in all its glory for more than a few days.

I have loads more Roses but the above are definitely my favourites right now - next year I intend to add several more climbing Roses to the next area of garden to be renovated. I'm going to mix climbing roses with honeysuckle as both are hardy in this climate and I need to cover parts of the bird aviaries quickly.

But look what else is flowering in the garden. This Verbena is growing amazingly well, Mr TG doesn't like it he says it looks like a weed but personally I think it looks quite sweet.

And look how cute this is. I spotted this Seaholly misshape and just had to share it - it's a heart!

Finally this Scabiosa is a new one for me. I grew it for cutting but I've never cut it.

On a different note I got around to building that potting bench. Once it's in situ I'll get some piccies but let's just warn ya, it ain't quite what I had in mind.

Compost & Comfrey?

There's not much to show in my garden at the moment, don't get me wrong everything is growing rampant but it's that time of year when all I seem to be doing is weeding and tidying every day - oh and feeding every bird in Caithness judging by how much food they're getting through.

Today I tackled the compost heap. Remember the bins I made out of scrap wood a few months ago, well I've been ignoring the compost growing in them because it just never seems to do anything and I was getting a bit cheesed off with it - in fact the last lot of stuff I threw on it even included plastic tags such was my 'the thing doesn't work anyway' attitude.
This morning at 6am I sat and watched my 2 favourite gardening programmes and the first one 'Beechgrove garden' had a snippet about garden compost which got me to thinking I really needed to get my act together and get the hang of getting it right - my garden is so in need of as much as I can produce.
So I watched and listened as Jim McColl  went through all the stuff you can compost as well as the stuff you can't and then he went onto the task of turning it, that is when it dawned on me that I'm still not turning the blinking thing and that's probably why it's not rotting - I'm a lazy gardener have I ever mentioned that?
So one of my tasks today was to turn the heap. Here's the unturned heap - there's actually alot more there than it looks

Unrotted huh! I know it doesn't look much but I still have a tendency to throw stuff that should be composted, plus I lose interest in doing it because it never seems to rot.

Then I turned it and discovered that it was actually rotting but I never see this because I never interact with it - I just leave it and add to it so it never looks rotted.

I've started a new bay now, this one will just be turned regular and covered until it's ready.

The next programme I watched this morning was 'Gardeners world', it's not the same since Geoff Hamilton died and then Alan Titchmarsh leaving but Monty Don is the perfect presenter in my book - I just wish there was more gardening and less gallavanting to be honest.
However, Monty touched on another subject today that I've always wanted to try - Comfrey liquid for feeding plants. I regularly have Seaweed tea to hand but I didn't think I had any comfrey growing anywhere to try comfrey tea. The laugh of that is that I didn't even know what Comfrey looked like so how do I know if I have any - again too lazy to check.
Anyways Monty cut some of his Comfrey plant and it suddenly looked familiar, I'm sure I have some of that growing on the land, so I took a couple of pictures.

Is this Comfrey people?
If it is then not only do I have some growing but I have heeeeeeaps of the stuff - how did I ever miss it! Assuming it is Comfrey of course?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone can tell me it is indeed Comfrey.

The smell in the polytunnel is getting more gorgeous by the day, not only are the Lilys and Pinks in flower now but the Sweetpea is too - what an awesome collection.

I'm not sure what the White one is called. I usually keep all the names somewhere safe but for some reason I haven't with the Pinks. They were a special offer from Gardeners World magazine last year where I just paid p&p for a fair few different ones but I can't for the life of me find where I recorded the names.

Garden overhaul

The Cauli's and Cabbages planted in the polytunnel are still getting eaten by slugs (I haven't got around to putting down cardboard yet) so I was quite surprised to find that the ones outside in the raised bed haven't been touched at all.
I do keep them covered with fleece to keep the butterflys off them but surely that wouldn't deter slugs?

Here's a glimpse of the extra land to the side of the house that we're thinking of adding to the existing garden. There's as much of it as I need but as you can see it needs a whole lot of work and extends way out to the right and far behind me.

That ground is about 3ft deep of hardcore so any planting would have to be in raised beds, grass would be viable if we lay a good layer of top soil first.
The back fence does have a line of Willow trees, these are usually shallow rooted and don't last very long in our winds so we dug out a trench all the way along the fence first approx 3 ft deep to the soil below. The 6ft willow were then planted into that and the trenches filled in with soil, this means that at least 3ft of the trees are underground and should therefore stay upright.
Still that's gonna be a lot of work if we go ahead.

Remember when I said in my last post that Mr TG and I were discussing what water feature to add in the pond? Well I was thinking along the lines of this

http://www.retaildisplaysandprops.com/custom_nature-themed_environments.htm

Ok more realistically this

http://www.waterfeatures.co.uk/nh.html

Basically I would have liked us to build something where the water runs off slate.
Today though I left Mr TG to his own devices and I thought he was working on "his" patch of land that he's been clearing but nope he'd been erecting this

Excuse the foreground mess it's waiting for decking to be erected but that piddly fountain is everything I hate about garden water features. Some people can make them look great but the wind we get here makes that kind of 3 tier fountain pretty pointless.
I'm currently convincing Mr TG that we need to collect some of the humongous rocks we have and make it look nicer than just an oblong with rocks round it - hard work though, bless him he thinks a water feature is a water feature is a water feature so it could take some time.

With the first half of the garden requiring only minimal work now - mainly decking - I can get onto to the second half once the dogs have their own area finished.
This is the current state of some of the bit to do

It's full of weed and it's been made worse by the fabric we put down under the gravel. The weeds had no problem growing through it and even self seeded in the gravel itself, this image only shows the grass weed but honestly, it's a mess.
All the Pink and Blue is Aquilegia, one plant that self seeded over and over again and is now more of a weed than a plant - but it's a pretty weed so it gets to survive one more year.
There are some nice plants in there such as a Rhodi, Hosta, a hardy Fuchsia, Dogwood, Cranesbill etc but I'm looking forward to getting to grips with this second half later in the year.